Other Laozi Parallels in the Hanfeizi - Sino-Platonic Papers

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Tae Hyun KIM, “Other Laozi Parallels in the Hanfeizi” Sino-Platonic Papers, 199 (March 2010) the Laozi (or Lao Dan), the Zhuangzi (or Zhuang Zhou), and early Daoism, as against the accepted version which has been regarded as represented by Lao-Zhuang: the historical reality of the Lao-Zhuang tradition seems quite questionable until the end of the Warring States or the early Western Han. We also must consider the problem of the historical origin of the term, Daoism: based on the testimonies of the Lao Dan biography in the Shiji, his father, Sima Tan, first referred to the term in the way we now understand it, 55 and he himself also to some extent intended that meaning by serially mentioning Zhuang Zhou, Shen Buhai, and Han Fei, after introducing Lao Dan, and by making Lao Dan the actual founder of a philosophical trend who existed before Kongzi. The issue seems to have been unresolved, or even not obviously raised at the time of Sima Qian. 56 Furthermore, these references show that there was some cultural impulse to establish Daoism as a historical fact at and before his time. 2-2-3. The Mawangdui finds: the date of creation and the textual characteristics Scholars generally accept that the date of the two MWD Laozi PL is the very early Western Han. 57 The idea of a “tabooed character” has been regarded as an applicable method to determine the dates of the manuscripts: Manuscript A is regarded as having been transcribed around 206–195 B.C.E when Liu Bang was not yet on the throne, since the character “bang” 邦 was not avoided in manuscript A. Applying the same method, scholars believe that manuscript B 55 Admittedly, its denotation by Sima Tan was not for Lao-Zhuang, but for Huang-Lao, as Harold convincingly points out. See his “Psychology and Self-Cultivation in Early Taoistic Thought,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 51.2(1991):599–650. 56 For an excellent explanation of the nature of Sima Qian’s writing on ancient Chinese history and figures in the Han times, see Michael Nylan, "Sima Qian: A True Historian?" Early China 24 (2000), 1–44. Even though it is barely possible to argue that the difference between the two is a product of modern European experience and therefore difficult to apply to traditional, esp. early Chinese history, not to distinguish them, it is still important, in evaluating his work as a historical document, to ascertain that his recordings did have a political and cultural orientation in describing figures and events, and conversely that these show what was culturally and politically happening at that time and how it affected his view on related figures or events. 57 On the basic textual profile of the MWD Laozi PL, see Gao Heng 高亨 and Chi Xichao 池曦朝, “Shitan Mawangdui zhongde Boshu Laozi” 試談馬王堆漢墓中的帛書老子, Wenwu 文物 222(1974.11):1–7. 28
Tae Hyun KIM, “Other Laozi Parallels in the Hanfeizi” Sino-Platonic Papers, 199 (March 2010) was copied around 194–180 B.C.E., when Liu Bang was on the throne, since while “bang” was substituted by another character “guo” 國, the two characters “ying” 盈 and “heng” 恒, which respectively stand for the names of the second and third emperors of the Western Han, were not avoided in manuscript B. 58 Regarding the textual nature of the MWD Laozi PL in light of the history of the Laozi, a significant question that has not been given serious attention to contemporary scholars concerns the title of the texts which offer parallels to the De and Dao chapters of the extant Laozi text. In my view, the question of the text title of the MWD PL can be explained by some significant textual differences in the two MWD parallel texts, De and Dao, in two different manuscripts, MWD A and B. 59 Ikeda Tomohisa claims that there was a textual improvement from the MWD A PL to MWD B PL. According to him, the improvement can be detected from the following points: 1) While the MWD A De and Dao PL did not bear any title, the MWD B De and Dao did; 2) MWD A was written on a 24-cm long silk piece, a fabric that was regarded as relatively less prestigious at the time, but MWD B was written on a 48-centimeter long silk piece, which was believed to 58 Besides this “tabooed character” criterion, several points have been made to prove that manuscript A was established earlier than manuscript B. Among these, it is worth noticing the ways in which their paleographical styles compare. While manuscript A was written in the Xiao Zhuan 小篆 style that had been designated as the official style by the First Emperor of Qin, B was in the Li Shu 隸書 style, which had been mostly used in practical affairs like legal suits. Since it is generally believed that Xiao Zhuan, as the official style of Qin, became unpopular after Western Han was established, scholars tend to regard manuscript A as earlier than B. 59 I admit that the following reflection is basically guesswork. For now, we have only two MWD De and Dao texts that have some different textual characteristics, and no more evidence to support an argument built merely on the differences. Thus, one may point out that we may find that they show merely small differences that could not have been very significant or meaningful at the time of creation, and this finding should not be stretched to fit my argument on the historicization of text. I am grateful to Professor Mattias Richter for pointing this out. Nevertheless, I believe that, as will be shown in this paper, many points that have been regarded traditionally as insignificant, minor, and meaningless in the study of Laozi and its early parallels have actually turned out to be very meaningful ones, especially when brought together and consistently analyzed with other evidence. According to my earlier understanding, differences between MWD M and B manuscripts can consist of strongly meaningful evidence for historicization of the Laozi text, when compared with other early parallels of the Laozi like those in GD and JYL. 29
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